The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. The Obsession with Illness in the Light of Spiritual Science

[ 1 ] In life, human beings are caught between two forces. On the one hand, there is the flow of events and facts, the ongoing reality around them, which makes a wide variety of impressions on them. This is counterbalanced, within the human being, by their own inner strength. One need only look at life superficially to realize that human beings need a necessary balance between the forces and realities that assail them from all sides and what unfolds within them. When a person has received one impression after another in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, they long for composure, for solitude. They feel that a healthy life can be found only through the right balance.

[ 2 ] A beautiful line by Goethe, which delves into the mysteries of existence, expresses the depth and breadth of life:

For all power surges forward into the vastness,
To live and act here and there;
Yet from every side, the current of the world
Restricts and hinders us, sweeping us along;
Amid this inner storm and outer strife
The spirit hears a word that is hard to understand:
From the power that binds all beings,
The person who overcomes himself is set free.

[ 3 ] There is much wisdom in these last two lines, which were just quoted from the “Secrets”: “Man frees himself from the power that binds all beings by overcoming himself.” The inner self of the human being—which surges forward like a storm as a force in constant development and unfolding—is contrasted by what approaches us from the outside. We find a balance when we overcome ourselves. We can take this as a guiding principle for the reflections that will occupy us today and the day after tomorrow. Both topics belong together. Today we want to address the obsession with illness, and as a necessary complement to this, a reflection on the obsession with health will follow the day after tomorrow.

[ 4 ] It is only in the course of reflection that these words can be justified. They lead us into the intellectual currents of the present and into what spiritual science sets against them—what it must set as its task.

[ 5 ] When one hears the term “delusion of illness,” one’s first thought is of the fact we so often encounter: that someone suffering from a more or less imagined illness experiences real pain and distress. This is precisely an area where the cultural mission of the humanities must be applied. Important matters depend on it. Before we delve into what the humanities have to say on this subject, let us bring a few images from contemporary life to mind. All the examples cited here are drawn from real life.

[ 6 ] On one of my trips—I was on my way from Rostock to Berlin—two other people were sitting with me in the compartment: a lady and a gentleman, who very soon struck up a conversation. The gentleman was behaving quite strangely. After just a few words, he lay down lengthwise on the bench and said that this was the only way he could bear life. The lady explained that she was from the East and had been staying at a Baltic Sea resort. Yesterday, she had been overcome by homesickness and had decided to travel home, and she burst into tears. The gentleman’s own health issues came to mind as he heard the lady crying: “I have many illnesses and travel from sanatorium to sanatorium without ever finding good health.” — The lady replied: “I also know a great deal about illnesses. Many people in my homeland owe their health and their lives to me.” — The man described one of his many ailments; drawing on the wealth of knowledge in her heart, the lady gave him a remedy, which he wrote down. After a few minutes, the second ailment came up, and so on, until he had happily jotted down thirteen remedies. The man had only one concern: “We’ll arrive in Berlin at nine o’clock—will I still be able to have the prescriptions filled by then?” The lady reassured him that it would likely still be possible. Strangely enough, the gentleman didn’t even notice that the lady herself was ill. The lady continued: “I have a great deal of compassion”—and she listed her own illnesses and recounted all the places she had gone to find a cure. The gentleman recommended a book by Lahmann to her. This was followed by a second ailment and a second pamphlet, until she had written down a total of five or six titles that she intended to buy the next day. Finally, she wrote down Lahmann’s address. In the meantime, they had arrived in Berlin. Everyone had written down what they needed and left satisfied.

[ 7 ] Anyone who looked at these people with even a modicum of insight soon realized that the woman was clearly lacking certain things, but the man lacked only the will to be healthy. Had he mustered the will to be healthy, he would have been completely healthy. Here we have something symptomatic that we encounter frequently in the present, and the discerning eye will be able to move from this image to another.

[ 8 ] When we hike in mountainous regions, we see old fortresses, ruined castles, and so on, which remind us of bygone eras when people strove for strength of spirit or when physical power reigned supreme. These castles are now in ruins, but everywhere near these monuments to strength, one sees sanatoriums today, one next to the other. This scene presented itself to me some time ago in an area particularly rich in sanatoriums. It became necessary for me to spend a quarter of an hour in one such sanatorium. People were just heading off to lunch. The conviction I gained there was that, among the hundreds of people present, not a single one actually had a serious need for the sanatorium lifestyle.

[ 9 ] Now let us turn to more intimate images, which we find in the annals of contemporary thinking physicians. Fortunately, there are indeed those who concern themselves with the soul as well as the body. I’ll choose an example from a doctor who would certainly regard everything theosophical as nonsense. Such people are quite certainly completely unaffected by what spiritual science has to say. One such outstanding doctor has recorded various incidents from his life—various cases in which he encountered people of the kind for whom the story told in the compartment is merely a particularly grotesque example. He was called to see a young girl whose symptoms all pointed to meningitis. But the doctor had a keen eye. When he was alone with her, he asked the questions one would normally ask in such a case, but none of his questions yielded a clear answer. Finally, it turned out that the young lady was supposed to graduate from school; however, the following year was to feature particularly interesting lectures that she still wanted to attend. Since everyone in her family was opposed to this, she fell ill. The doctor said, “I will do my best to ensure that you are allowed to stay there, but you must get up immediately and come to the table.”—And so it happened. After a few minutes, the young lady appeared at the table and was no longer ill. Another example: A very skilled doctor—who is well-known and has always commanded a certain respect from me—had to perform knee surgery. The patient’s brother was present. During the operation, there was a cracking sound. The brother felt a terrible pain as a result. The operation went well, but the brother fell ill and could not be cured for a whole year.

[ 10 ] Here we see the power that imagination and misguided delusions can have over the soul, and how the soul can give rise to simulated illnesses that appear as real, genuine clinical pictures. But the doctor must not go too far in this regard. The physician just mentioned is very skilled. Nor did he allow himself to be misled by the assumption that this must always be the case. A woman came to him who had been suffering from unbearable pain in her knee since her husband’s death. She had been treated by many doctors who were always convinced that her illness was related to psychological factors—specifically, the trauma of her husband’s death. Here, however, the doctor, with his clear-eyed perspective, did not look for any psychological aberration. He found that in this case, the underlying cause was a large corn on the heel. After the operation, he sent the lady to Gastein for convalescence, so as not to embarrass his colleagues too much.

[ 11 ] We have now examined this situation through a wide variety of examples. You can see how strongly the imagination—the mental image—can affect the physical organism. One might say that in these cases we were certainly not dealing with actual illnesses, but rather with delusions of illness. But anyone who is clear about the fact that everything physical is an expression of the spiritual—that everything that presents itself to our senses is a manifestation of the supersensible—will not take the matter so lightly. Even in things that seem quite remote, we are often dealing with the soul’s influence on the body. And what at first appears to us as trivial, ridiculous—mere imagination—very often leads, when pain sets in, to the onset of real illnesses, and even beyond the mere onset. This is more than something that can be dismissed with a mere shrug. If we wish to delve deeper into this, we must bring to mind what has already been discussed here on several occasions: the nature and essence of the human being.

[ 12 ] For spiritual science, what we encounter is merely an outward appearance. The human body is one member among others of the human being, which it shares with all other beings surrounding it. In addition, it has the etheric body, which permeates the physical body—as it does in every living being—and which fights against the decay of the physical body. The third component is the astral body, the bearer of pleasure and displeasure, joy and pain, passion and desire, the lowest instincts as well as the highest ideals. This is what humans share only with the animal kingdom. What makes the human being the crown of creation—what distinguishes him from all other beings—is his “I.” For the purposes of our consideration, these four members initially constitute the whole human being. We must, however, be clear that everything that appears visible to our eyes is nothing other than that which has arisen from the spirit. There is nothing material that does not have a spiritual foundation.

[ 13 ] A comparison that has been used many times before: A child shows us ice. We say: It is water in another form. — The child will then say: You say it is water, but it is ice, after all. — To this, one will reply: You do not understand the way in which water turns into ice. — It is the same for those who do not know that matter is a condensed form of the spirit. For the spiritual scientist, however, everything that is visible in us has arisen from the very same substance that we carry within us as the astral body. The etheric body and the physical body are successive products of the condensation of the astral body. An illustration: We have a certain mass of water and transform part of it into ice; then we have ice within water. In the same way, the etheric body and the physical body are condensed from the astral body. The astral body is what remains, having retained its original form.

[ 14 ] When we are confronted with health or illness, we may say that they are the expression of certain forces that we see in the astral body. Of course, we are speaking here only of illnesses that arise from within, not of those caused by external influences, such as a broken leg, an upset stomach, or a cut on the finger. We are speaking of those pathological conditions that arise from the human being’s own nature, and we ask ourselves: Is there not only a connection, dating back to ancient times, between the astral body and the physical body, but is there also still today a connection between the inner processes of the soul—pleasure and suffering—and the physical conditions of our bodies? Can we say that a person’s physical health depends in part on whether they experience certain feelings or have certain thoughts? If we allow such thoughts to permeate our minds, we will be able to shed light on important insights that should be particularly valuable to people today.

[ 15 ] People today have lost the ability to rise to the realization that the physical body is not the only thing. What matters here is not what people believe in theory, but rather what attitude they hold deep within their souls toward the higher aspects of their being. To understand what really matters here, let us recall the dispute between Rudolf Wagner and Carl Vogt, the author of the treatise *Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft* (*Charcoal Belief and Science*). Wagner advocated the spiritualist viewpoint, while Vogt saw human beings as nothing more than a conglomeration of physical elements—of atoms. For him, thoughts are merely a secretion of the brain, a blue haze arising from the brain’s activity. At death, the physical elements cease to produce this blue haze of thoughts. Wagner objected to this, but in a way that led one to believe: If a couple has eight children, then something of the parents’ spirit is passed on to the children, distributed among the eight. He thus conceives of the spirit in entirely material terms, perhaps—like so many people—as a mist-like formation. But what matters is that one elevates oneself through one’s attitudes, perceptions, and feelings to truly grasp the spirit. So there may be many people today who, while they want nothing to do with materialism, nevertheless conceive of the spirit in entirely material terms. Many theosophists, too, conceive of the spirit as finely dispersed matter. Even within theosophy, there is much hidden, veiled materialism.

[ 16 ] If a person cannot rise to this spiritual height, then an inner desolation, a sense of emptiness, and a disbelief in everything that transcends matter gradually take hold of them. When this takes hold of one’s feelings, when it eats away at all faith and all the soul’s emotions, when a person looks out into the world and can no longer perceive anything beyond what they see, then what comes to light is what leads the person more and more toward the most extreme physical egoism, where one’s own body becomes increasingly important, and where one stands farther and farther removed from Goethe’s saying:

From the force that binds all beings,
The person who overcomes themselves is set free.

[ 17 ] Here we come to an important aspect of materialism that would only become fully apparent in the future if spiritual science were unable to overcome it. If a person comprehends what their senses perceive solely through the intellect, the consequences for human well-being will be quite different than if they see in what they encounter the sensory expression of something spiritual. Materialistic thinking and spiritual scientific thinking have a profound effect on the human inner life. Thus, the question of the significance of materialistic and spiritual scientific thinking has more than just theoretical importance. Let us first consider the effect: one has a desolating effect, the other an inwardly fulfilling one. Here are a few simple examples of the significance of these effects for human beings: One is most likely to become nearsighted if, during the formative years, one passively surrenders to impressions. But if one actively engages with the impressions of things, then one’s eyesight remains good. Human beings must develop productive power from within. Everything that prompts a person to make themselves the center of creative, productive power is health-promoting. They must create from within; otherwise, their productive power withers, and their entire being is squeezed by external impressions. All external impressions must be countered by a counterforce from within. But this must also be complemented by the opposite: a person must develop an activity that closes itself off from the outside world and becomes invisible to the outside.

[ 18 ] There are two spiritual experiences in which you should fully immerse yourself; they show you that human beings possess an inner richness that radiates outward, and that they seek a focal point for their outward activity. These two emotional states should be studied, for they lead us deep into the root causes of human illness. One emotion is negative—fear—and the other is positive—shame; yet shame also carries a negative connotation. Suppose you are faced with an event that fills you with fear and dread. If you do not view this from a materialistic standpoint but take the astral body into account as well, then turning pale will appear as an expression of the flow of forces within the human being. Why does the soul affect blood circulation in this way? Because the soul strives to create a center of will within itself so that it can act outward from there. It is literally a gathering of blood at the center so that it can act outward from there. This is meant more or less figuratively. With shame, it is the opposite: we blush; the blood flows from the inside to the periphery. The feeling of shame reveals states in which we wish to erase what is visible, in which we wish to erase our “I.” The human being wants to weaken the “I” more and more, so that it is no longer perceptible to the outside world. Human beings need something here to lose themselves in—a merging with the universe, with the world soul, or, if you will, with their surroundings—so that what we call our “I” does not become visible to the outside world. Here you have a polarity that points to important states of the etheric body and the astral body. These are two instances where the forces of the astral body become visible to the outside world. Fear and shame express themselves in physical states. If you consider this, you will understand that all psychological processes can have an effect on the processes of the organism. This is true; this is what esoteric science teaches: there is a connection, even if it does not immediately come to a person’s consciousness.

[ 19 ] Now, however, we must consider the fact that abstract thoughts today have the least conceivable effect on the organism. What we learn in the abstract sciences has the very least possible effect on the body. Their principle is to transform what we see and perceive into intellectual concepts. This science refuses to acknowledge that human beings possess an inner, productive wisdom, that the soul can produce something about the world from within itself. By observing only the external world, it produces nothing. In the deepest sense, there is no inner creative power to counterbalance external impressions. The scientist does not want to be able to discover anything from within himself. When we consider how deeply rooted it is—this belief that human beings can no longer discover anything from within themselves—we have here the starting point for the desolating effect of knowledge that clings solely to the external world.

[ 20 ] What remedy, then, is there here for all of humanity? The remedy would be for the inner quest for wisdom and truth—the inner productivity of the spirit—to join forces with external science. This can be found in true spiritual science. There you have opened up sources through which human beings can develop from within themselves what lies behind things. For some, things weigh them down. But whoever sees what external perception cannot grasp—whoever takes this in—creates the counterpart to external perception that is necessary for the complete healing of the soul and the body. This healing of the soul cannot be brought about by abstract theories and thoughts, which are too thin, too meager. What, on the other hand, has a powerful effect is that which transforms from a concept into an image. How is this to be understood? You can best grasp this by thinking about what is called “evolution.” You hear it said: There were the simplest living beings, which became increasingly complex all the way up to human beings. But here again, you have only abstract, meager concepts. You find the same thing in many theosophical theories of evolution. These start with the Logos and then proceed using nothing but abstract concepts such as differentiation, evolution, and involution, and so on. This has too weak an effect on the organism. What has a powerful effect, however, is what lives in the soul when one thinks something through—as has been done in Germany since the 14th century by presenting it to the soul as an image or imagination. Such an image will be depicted here.

[ 21 ] Let us turn into a dialogue what was said to the student: Look at the plant, place the human being next to it, and compare the two. One must not compare the head to the flower and the foot to the root. Not even Darwin, the reformer of the natural sciences, did that. The student was told: The root corresponds to the human head; the human is an inverted plant. — Spiritual science has always said this. What the plant receives from the sun’s rays in chastity, so that the new plant may be born, is directed in the human being, conversely, toward the center of the Earth in modesty. The animal stands midway between the two. The animal is the half-turned plant. Plato says, summarizing what lives in the plant, the animal, and the human being: “The world soul is crucified on the cross of the world body.” — The world soul, which passes through plant, animal, and human, is crucified upon the world body. This is how the cross has always been explained in spiritual science. Now the student, to whom this significant image had been presented, was told: You see how the human being evolves upward from the dull consciousness of the plant, through the animal, to the point where he has found his self-consciousness. In the sleeping human being, we have something that has the same value of existence as the plant. By permeating the pure, chaste plant matter with the body of desire, the human being has risen higher, but has also, in a certain sense, descended lower. Otherwise, he could not have acquired his high sense of self; but now he must also transform his nature of desire once again. Later, human beings will have an organ of reproduction, free from desire, like the calyx of a plant. Thus, the student was directed toward the time when human beings will bring forth their own kind free from desire.

[ 22 ] This has been depicted in the image of the Holy Grail in the Grail Schools. Here, the development was not presented in thought, but in an image, in an imagination. In this way, we could transform everything that is presented only in abstract concepts into images. This would accomplish a great deal. If one allows this significant ideal of development to rise before one’s eyes all the way to the development of the imagination of the Holy Grail, then one has not only nourishment for the power of judgment; then it is not only the intellect that is engaged; then the full essence of feeling winds itself around such an image. You shudder before the great mystery of the world when you see the development of the world in truth and take in such images within yourself; such images have a harmonizing effect on the organism in accordance with natural laws. Abstract thoughts are ineffective, but these images act as healing inner stimuli. Images evoke emotions, and if they are true world-images, imaginations, then they have a healing effect. When a person transforms what they see externally into these images, they break free from their inner self, and the storm is transformed into harmony. Then they overcome the “force that binds all beings,” and they become one with everything that comes before them. They flow outward; through their feelings, they grow together with the world. The inner self expands into a spiritual universe. At the moment when a person has no ability to form these inner imaginings, all their energy flows inward, and they become firmly attached to their ego. This is the mysterious reason behind what we observe in many of our contemporaries: People have abandoned the old form of religion, and now they are cast back upon themselves. They are living more and more within themselves, more and more solely with themselves. The less a person is able to lose themselves in the general existence of the world, the more they sense what is happening within their own organism. This is the cause of false feelings of anxiety and false notions of illness.

[ 23 ] Images affect the organism from the soul; a healthy physical constitution is brought about by true images. False images also become ingrained. They give rise to what we encounter in mental disturbances, which later develop into physical disorders. Herein lies the true cause that ultimately leads to delusions of illness. Those who shut themselves off from the greater context of the world will not be able to reject what confronts them. Conversely, it is impossible for those who have imprinted great images upon themselves to be deceived by false images. For example, they would not—as sometimes happens—feel the current from an induction apparatus passing through their body, even though no current is actually present.

[ 24 ] Any image that does not fit into the context of the world—anything that comes across as a one-sided portrayal of everyday life—is at the same time a harmful image. Only by constantly looking up from the particular to the great mysteries of the world can a person correct what needs to be corrected. That which truly affects the soul can unleash a powerful force. What has been brought forth in this way in the course of cultural development is something that must not be neglected. Today we will limit ourselves to the instincts of health. Let us consider tragedy from this perspective. The ancient Greeks knew that a person who watches a tragedy, who witnesses the suffering, is gripped and moved by it; but when he leaves the theater, he knows that the hero has triumphed over suffering, that human beings can overcome the suffering of the world. Through witnessing suffering and its overcoming, they are healed. Turning one’s gaze inward makes one sick. Seeing what lives within, represented outwardly in an image—that is what heals. That is why Aristotle defines tragedy as demonstrating how the hero passes through suffering and fear, so that people may be healed of suffering and fear. This has far-reaching implications. The scholar of the humanities can tell you why ancient peoples presented images to the human soul through fairy tales and legends: they were shown images of that from which they should turn their inner gaze away. The flow of blood in fairy tales is a healthy educational tool. Those who can follow the myths in this way will see much in them. For example, when a person sees revenge depicted externally in an image—when they see externally in an image what they are meant to overcome—it has the effect of helping them overcome it. Deep, profound wisdom lies even in the most bloodthirsty fairy tales. Our inner harmony is disturbed when we constantly peer into our own souls; it is restored when we gaze out into the universe, into the cosmos. But one must know what kinds of images are necessary: Take, for example, a melancholic person, a hypochondriac, who cannot let go of certain events. Now one wants to cheer him up with cheerful music or the like. This achieves the opposite effect, even if it may not seem so at first; deep down in his soul, he finds it hollow and dreary, even if he does not admit it. Serious images are necessary, even if they are unsettling at first.

[ 25 ] So you see that a very specific form of soul therapy can emerge from spiritual science. One cannot address the delusion of illness on a case-by-case basis. It stems from our materialistic age and a lack of productivity. The false, unfounded fear—all the feelings that express a disturbed psychological balance, such as melancholy and so on—are explained by looking more deeply into the underlying connections. This is also where the remedies are found. It could never happen to someone who sees through these interrelationships that they cannot detach themselves from their ego. In such cases, there is usually some trigger, but it is magnified. An example: someone bumps their knee on the edge of a table. They lack the grand, all-consuming thoughts that would allow them to detach from the pain. Thus, the pain grows ever greater. The doctor is called and says that this or that must be done. Then, suddenly, the person feels pain in the other knee. Then the elbow is affected, and so on, until finally he can no longer move his legs or hands—all because he had bumped his knee. There may be things that draw attention to a specific point, but there are also things that can provide a balance . In our increasingly difficult lives, people can find balance only by allowing spiritual science to take effect within them. Then they will be equipped to face the influences of civilization.

[ 26 ] But we can also find external reasons for the lack of productivity. The facts speak for themselves. Look at the animals that have been transplanted into our culture, into captivity. There they fall ill—animals that would never fall ill out in the wild. This is because everything that originates from the external environment exerts a powerful influence on both humans and animals. Animals cannot develop a counterforce, for their development is complete. Human beings, too, fall into decadence as a result of cultural progress if they cannot counter external influences with productive power. They must reshape and transform these influences through inner activity; only then can they even be used for the higher development of humanity. The person who develops a radical materialist theory—the creator of that theory—is healthy, for they create from within. The followers of this theory become desolate because they lack their own productive power. If you read books on spiritual science, it has no value at all unless you reconstruct them inwardly. Then it becomes a process of inner co-creation. If that is not the case, then it is not studying spiritual science books. What matters is feeling the force that drives us forward and seeks to take in the outer world, and finding a balance between external impressions and inner productivity. A person must free themselves from the world’s external strife so that it does not become increasingly noticeable and overwhelm them. We must mount a counterattack. The external impression must also encounter a counterforce from within. Then we can break free from it; otherwise, it will push us further and further back into our inner selves. If we focus solely on our inner world, a picture of suffering arises before our soul. When we express the balance between the inner force—which strives restlessly forward—and the outer force, we merge with the outer world. Thus, today we have come to understand, in a deeper sense, the delusion of illness as a phenomenon of our time.

[ 27 ] The starting point today was this: The spiritual science aims to be a remedy so that human beings can free themselves from themselves and thus from every binding force. For every binding force is a source of illness. Only in this way can we gain clarity about the profound essence of Goethe’s verse:

For all power surges forward into the vastness,
To live and act here and there;
Yet from every side, the current of the world
Restricts and hinders us, sweeping us along;
Amid this inner storm and outer strife
The spirit hears a word that is hard to understand:
From the power that binds all beings,
The person who overcomes himself is set free.